Current Projects

Seismic design codes have to ensure that buildings have a low probability of collapse in the event of a severe earthquake. To develop such standards, the ability to assess the collapse margin ratios of building systems designed according to given specifications is of critical importance. Under severe seismic forces, reinforced masonry (RM) wall structures may develop complicated nonlinear behavior involving interaction between steel and masonry. Furthermore, the interaction of structural walls with other elements in a building system could lead to nonlinear behavior and collapse mechanisms that were not anticipated in design, including behavior dominated by diagonal shear cracks. The ability of analytical models to capture these mechanisms and interactions is crucial for an accurate assessment of the collapse potential of a building. The main aim of this project is to obtain necessary experimental data to understand the behavior of RM wall structures to the point of collapse, and to use the data to advance and validate refined as well as simplified analytical modeling methods.

The Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table is supported in part by the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Engineering Simulation (NEES) program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number CMMI-0927178.